Tag: Cádiz

What have diagonal lines ever done for me?

That is the question posed by Patti, for this week’s Lens Artists’ Challenge #228. Well, not done for me exactly, but done for my photos. Have a photos diagonal lines invited us in, encouraged us to explore the picture, or to focus on some detail?

Let’s have a look, and have a bit of a trip out too.

We’ll start off close to home, one cold wintry morning as I went to get the paper. Those rays of sunshine enlivened the scene, and my mood.

Here are two more, from just down the road. A tree which instead of reaching skywards, leans across the woods to demand a place centre-stage for the whole shot. And ox-eye daisies splicing the image in half, showing us there’s countryside, not a garden beyond.

A trip to the seaside? Alnmouth in Northumbria?

This quiet beach looks dramatic when the tide’s out.

Brussels now. A bank of plate glass windows reflects the opposite side of the road to dramatic effect. Monochrome too, for Bren’s Mid-Week Monochrome.

Off to Spain now. All those dizzy hairpin bends in Cantabria invite us to explore.

Then two more scenes – one from Cádiz, the other from Valencia. Those diagonals pull us in to explore the cathedral in one, the reflections in the other.

This shot, from Alicante, uses the ropes on a yacht as a frame for the scene beyond.

Alicante

I’ve hesitated over whether to include this last shot in what is essentially a light-hearted post. But this photo – not a particularly original one as so many others have taken similar shots – has stayed with me. It’s Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. These are the railway lines that brought so many thousands of Jews on their very last journey. I wrote about it here.

I decided on balance to include it, as the relative optimism I felt when I wrote that post five years ago has disappeared in the light of world events over the last couple of years: and we shouldn’t forget.

‘How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun’

At the moment, we all need the glow, the zing that a good splash of yellow can provide. Luckily, Jude has provided the perfect opportunity for us to hunt down all our yellow-rich images, in her challenge Life in Colour. Let’s have an injection of gutsy, vibrant lemon, amber and gold alongside our long awaited Covid vaccines.

I’d thought of showing those springtime flowers we all love – aconites, daffodils, primrose, tulips and kingcups. But maybe I’ll save those for another day. Here’s a complete hotch-potch of yellows to cheer up a day which, here at least is thoroughly and dismally grey.

  • The sign that greets me whenever I leave the house
  • A shop and its reflections in Granada
  • My first friend in Bangalore: the rickshaw driver who took me on a tour of the city
  • William, obligingly wearing yellow, at Newby Hall.
  • Advance guard at Le Tour de Yorkshire
  • A puppet at the Museo del Titere, Cádiz
  • A pinted door in Valencia.
  • A back street in Seville.
  • Garage door in Seville.
  • Another Seville door
  • Valencia
  • A Seville building in need of a make-over gets one …

To view any image full size. just click on it. The quotation of the post title is by Vincent Van Gogh. No wonder he liked sunflowers. And the header photo shows one word from another quotation. Wander round the St. Paul’s area of London and you’ll eventually uncover the whole sentence, from Virginia Woolf’s novel, Jacob’s Room: ‘What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?‘ What indeed? In this area of London, enough to fill an entire guide book.

More postcards – and from Cádiz again

I have said it before, and I expect I shall say it again, but our few days in Cádiz earlier this year – this year! – are part of another life – a life I want to remember and treasure. And Jude provides an opportunity in her Travel Challenge. She’s hoping that outline, rather than three dimensional qualities will come to the fore in our choices of photo. As I looked through my archive, I realised that Cádiz fits the bill, yet again.

It’s nearly all about the seafront. Those palm trees! Those street lights!

Or we could look beyond the old city to industry and modern life in the distance.

Or we could go indoors – first to climb the Cathedral tower and to inspect the old clock workings: before going to a traditional sherry bar, Manzanilla, to enjoy a quiet drink and a snack surrounded by those barrels of maturing sherry ¡Salud!

2020 Photo Challenge #49

A window in a bad way

Tomorrow, for our regular Tuesday Day Out, we’re taking (another) trip to Cádiz. We’re going to spend time near the sea and pop to a couple of places in town. But today I want to take you instead to Plaza de España. Here is a handsome house in a handsome area. But now it’s down on its uppers. No longer smart, it’s still extremely characterful. I thought it deserved its fifteen minutes of fame.

Monday Window

Noticing the notices: a Saturday smile.

Trawling through my photos looking for something I couldn’t find, I came across these.

  • No driver in India needs to be asked twice to use their horn. At any time of the day or night.
  • I didn’t stay here ….
  • … or take this advice
  • Wensleydale Railway. We shut the gate.
  • Sadly, we saw no red squirrels in Dumfries and Galloway
  • Cádiz
  • So we didn’t.
  • I can’t remember where we spotted this pub. Just as well.
  • ‘Going to the hairdresser is the best natural anti-depressant’: Cádiz.
    Especially after Lockdown …

The featured photo comes from RSPB Saltholme.

Cee’s Friday Funny Finds

Six Word Saturday

A Sunset Symphony

Was it really in January this year that we were in Cádiz? It feels like another era, but one I can summon up in my head by remembering the glory of the sunsets we saw there. You’ll have seen at least some of these photos before, but this is your Virtual Holiday for the week. I’m presenting them to Jude for her Photo Challenge this week, and to Becky – well, one of them anyway – for her October Squares. How kind of me to share!

2020 Photo Challenge #41

#Kinda Square

Everything Points to the Cathedral

I’ve shown this image before, but it’s a textbook  demonstration of perspective – everything here leads your eye to the cathedral in Cádiz – so let’s give it another outing – squared up of course – for Day Ten of Square Perspectives.

Were we really only there in January?  It feels like another life, a different world.  And look at that clear, warm light!  Ah well …

Keep Right on to the Top of the Road

‘Look for converging lines’, instructs Jude.  They’re there to add depth and distance, so she wants to see what we can find as illustrations.  So I went to Cádiz, I went to Brussels, I went to Yorkshire – of course.  And finally I went to London.

Here we are on the road by the seafront in Cádiz. The road, our eyes are lead inexorably towards the Cathedral.

Now we’re in Brussels. I quite like it that the street’s more easily seen in the plate glass reflection. And that the lines on the window, and on the pavement are also working towards converging.

Since the Tour de France started in Yorkshire in 2014, dear old Buttertubs has been elevated to being called Côte de Buttertubs. You can cycle it yourself … or not. Look at this picture and decide.

Nothing can top your very first ever walk in the snow. This was William’s first chance, back when he was three.

2020 Photo Challenge #16

#Squaretops 22